THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
A BLIND ARAB MINSTREL BEGS FOR ALMS AT UR
The flute and trumpet, harps large and small, the lyre (see illus
tration, page 114), the drum, tambourine, and cymbals were known
to the Sumerians. In the temples, in separate chambers, priestesses
taught music to girls who wished to adopt it as a profession.
harmonizes the evidence of legend, his
tory, and geology in the most amazing
manner.
THE SUMERIAN NOAH RELATES HIS
ADVENTURES IN THE ARK
To show the literary parallel of the Gene
sis account, we may quote extracts from
one of the early Babylonian tablets writ
ten in the wedge-shaped cuneiform script.
Ut-Napishtim, the Sumerian Noah, tells
of his adventures within the Ark:
Six days and nights
Raged wind, deluge and storm upon the earth.
When the seventh day arrived the storm ceased
saturated with the
Which had fought like a
host of men:
The sea was calm, hur
ricane and deluge
ceased.
I beheld the land and
cried aloud:
For the whole of man
kind were turned to
clay;
Hedged fields had become
marshes.
I opened a window and
the light fell upon my
face .
.
.
When the seventh day
arrived,
I brought forth a dove,
and let it go:
The dove went to and
fro:
As there was no resting
place it turned back.
I brought forth a raven
and let it go:
The raven went and saw
the decrease of the
waters.
It ate, it waded, it
croaked (?), it
turned not back.
I offered sacrifice.
The gods smelt the savor.
The gods smelt the goodly
savor.
The gods gathered like flies
over the sacrifice.
The resemblance in
detail to the Genesis
account is remarkable,
and the picture pre
sented is pregnant
with the atmosphere
of Babylonia.
The
account is, as it were,
clay and marsh of an
alluvial country; there is the receding of
the water, the oncoming heat, and the
gathering of the flies. How vivid is the
story in its simplicity!
That story must be supplemented with
further evidence from the soil. We can
not but wish to know more of this flood.
Its effect on the imagination has caused it
to survive to the present day in legend, so
that the ark represented on stone plaques
of 5,000 years ago is still the plaything of
the 20th-century child.
Apart from the discovery of the flood,
last season's work in the cemetery con-
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